Molecular Mechanism of the Pin1–Histone H1 Interaction

Pin1 is an essential peptidyl-prolyl isomerase (PPIase) that catalyzes cis–trans prolyl isomerization in proteins containing pSer/Thr-Pro motifs. It has an N-terminal WW domain that targets these motifs and a C-terminal PPIase domain that catalyzes isomerization. Recently, Pin1 was shown to modify the conformation of phosphorylated histone H1 and stabilize the chromatin–H1 interaction by increasing its residence time. This Pin1−histone H1 interaction plays a key role in pathogen response, in infection, and in cell cycle control; therefore, anti-Pin1 therapeutics are an important focus for treating infections as well as cancer. Each of the H1 histones (H1.0–H1.5) contains several potential Pin1 recognition pSer/pThr-Pro motifs. To understand the Pin1–histone H1 interaction fully, we investigated how both the isolated WW domain and full-length Pin1 interact with three H1 histone substrate peptide sequences that were previously identified as important binding partners (H1.1, H1.4, and H1.5). NMR spectroscopy was used to measure the binding affinities and the interdomain dynamics upon binding to these sequences. We observed different KD values depending on the histone binding site, suggesting that energetics play a role in guiding the Pin1–histone interaction. While interdomain interactions vary between the peptides, we find no evidence for allosteric activation for the histone H1 substrates